W.O.F. 14

Well, for this week's Weird Object, I could post my sister, or my father, both of whom are "in the house" on the way to a family reunion in Indiana. But I won't.

We went to this tag sale a few weeks ago, where a houseful of items are up for sale because some household has come to an end. It's sort of sad, really. But off in the garage was this ancient Sony
TC-105 model Tapecorder, probably a remnant from the early 60's. It was tagged at a dollar; the lady said "just take it".

The tape didn't spin so I had to remove the front panel and tinker, thus the "guts" of the thing are exposed in this picture. But I got it moving, and on the tape were a series of old, Lawrence Welk vintage songs. Picture, if you will, a Saturday night, reel to reel tape recorder spinning along, a soft big band song wafting through the air, my wife gazing lovingly into my eyes... well, she did look at me, and we even "cut a rug" to one of the less cheesy songs.

Anyhow, I do have a history with reel to reel tape recorders. My neighborhood buds and I used to have a couple of them between us, and we'd be radio talk show hosts, sports announcers, you name it, on tape. Three of us had a "band" of sorts and we'd cut tapes on my friend Gerald's Sony that could tape two tracks, "sound on sound". I still have a pile of old reels of memorabilia that I hope to take a listen to, maybe convert a few historical moments to CD. Of course, now they'll tell you that CDs are passe and everything now is just torrents of electrons, bits and bytes, taking up no space at all except a few kbs on the hard drive. Not sure today's efficient technology has quite the magic of those mesmerizing, spinning reels of tape.